31 March, 2014

Robin Riopelle is the author of Deadroads, the latest from Night Shade Books, which comes out tomorrow. I'm extremely excited to have her on the blog today, discussing a very important aspect of fantasy ... language. If done right, language can add such depth to the fantasy world and it's been a focus of many authors from Tolkien to Delaney. It also plays a key role in Riopelle's novel, so without further ado...

_______________________

Valar morghulis: It’s the tagline HBO is using to sell the
new season of Game of Thrones. Who knows what it means? Hands, everyone.
Thanks. Yes, all men must die, that’s right.

See what I just did there? I used a fictional foreign
language, and I almost immediately provided the translation. That way, you
weren’t too annoyed if you didn’t know or remember what the hell those words
meant (though given HBO’s relentless marketing campaign, I’d be surprised if
you didn’t). If writers drop in foreign phrases without unduly pissing off the reader—particularly
words from a language they’ve gone to the trouble of making up—it’s a convenient
way to convey the rich complexity of a particular people.

At a bare minimum, language adds atmosphere. Taken at its
deepest point, language underpins the very fabric of culture.

There’s a good reason passels of cultural theory folks* have
had a whack at dissecting the role of language in the formation, development,
and retention of culture. Simply put, language is culture. It’s why languages other than English** should be
protected and supported, especially in places like French Canada, and among
aboriginal communities. Loss of language is a precursor to loss of identity.

For writers, constructing a new language (a conlang) or
weaving in an established one, allows an entry point into the values and
beliefs of the people they are writing about. Imagine if the Lothlorien elves
spoke English all the time, or if we never had the pleasure of hearing Daenerys mangle the dour
Dothraki vocabulary. Our world would not be a richer place.

In my novel Deadroads, the main characters have
a Cajun father and an Acadian mother. The French phrases and syntax that occasionally
surface reflect these roots, are part and parcel of cultural identity and the
characters’ sense of belonging. Lutie, the sister fostered away from her family,
grew up without the language, and her inability to speak in the cadences of her
brothers hampers her efforts to connect.

The use of actual non-English languages in fiction is
established and not without its critics. The
Guardian’sDaniel
Kalder plaints that the use of untranslated foreign words is a “cheap bus
ticket to bogus exoticism.” Tell that to Ernest Hemingway, or Cormac McCarthy, or
Vikram Seth. Hell, tell it to Anthony Burgess and Irvine Welsh.

The omission of a non-English language would be paramount to
ignoring it. Worse, to assimilating the people that speak it, to steamroll their
unique words and associated culture into the mainstream tarmac.

Other critics feel that the use of a language other than
English is distracting, confusing, and distancing. Unbridled, the language runs
amok, destroying plot and overturning the narrative furniture. Myself, I’m
pretty happy not to be spoon-fed. I don’t mind puzzling out the language when
the author’s given me enough context, and my friend the Internet is usually
just a click or two away anyway.

Where language goes, the rest follows. Guy Gavriel Kay is
aware of this, at no time more poignantly than in his wonderful novel, Tigana, where an entire nation is dispossessed not only of its
land, but of the very name of their land. They can still say the word—the title
of the book—but no one not born there can hear it. Their past, their very identity, has been made less, rendered
null.

It’s a terrible reality for many people(s): the aboriginal
children of residential schools, beaten if they spoke their native tongue; new-arrived
immigrants, desperate for their children to assimilate, losing them when they
can’t speak the same language anymore. I can pin the time when French left my
family: my grandfather spoke it fluently, but his wife forbade him from passing
it along to the children, even going so far to Anglicize the family name.

Reclaiming language once it’s gone isn’t easy, but not
writing of it at all is worse.

** In Western culture, particularly North America, English
is the dominant language and is arguably pretty robust. This in no way demeans
or negates the efforts of organizations such as the Apostrophe Protection Society or every
grammar nerd ever born.

29 March, 2014

I really wanted to post about this new book by Jo Walton (one of a few coming out this year by the author), but I find that if I wait until I'm done reading, it'll be years before I can say anything.

And the reason for that is right there in the title. What Makes This Book So Great is about as clever as you can get for a book containing Jo Walton's reviews and other posts she has done for Tor.com, referring to both the reviews and the immediate book.

Full of wonderful reviews, Walton covers many classics of fantasy and science fiction and does so with so much love of the genre that it compels you to check them out. As if I don't have enough in mount-to-read, this book covers so many I have and haven't heard of and I have to have them all. Now, you see why I can't possibly read this book all at once. It makes me go track down other books!

In addition to wonderful reviews, there are plenty of other articles, such as one of my favorites so far, "How to Talk to Authors."

In this world where authors are so much more accessible than they ever have been, from blogs to twitter to the endless supply of comic conventions, chances are you have the opportunity to meet an author. Don't make a fool of yourself with such simple advice as don't say "I'm sorry, but I haven't read any of your books." Because, well, what does someone say to that? As, Walton points out, "Writers see their sales figures. They know that statistically it's unlikely that you've read their books."

I'm really enjoying this book and wanted to let you know a little about it even though I'm nowhere near close to finishing it. It's one of those read when you are in the mood and highly recommended because Jo Walton's love for the genre is infectious.

28 March, 2014

As I explained in the giveaway post, the first winner of the giveaway had the opportunity to pick which book he wanted and the second winner at least gets a book right? I just got in contact with one of the winners (the one that needed to pick a book!) and now we're ready to post the results.

Choosing The Barrow by Mark Smylie, our first winner is Matthew Beaty from north Carolina.

Choosing (with no choice in the matter) Blood and Iron by Jon Sprunk is Eric Schwartz from Kentucky.

Both these books look excellent and I'll be jumping into Blood and Iron myself very soon.

I promise this was an international giveaway, but this is just how the cards fell (and by cards I mean Random.org). I can't say my wallet wasn't a little happy about it, but I would have been just as happy with an international winner. Promise. :) Thanks to all the entrants and congrats to the winners!

20 March, 2014

What's that you say? That's not news to you? Somehow, I'm the only one who has to keep finding this out.

So, I screwed up. The inimitable Ryan from Battle Hymns offered to put together a post that I could publish while I was studying for the bar the last couple months and distinctly not blogging much if at all. Not only does he have excellent things to say (seriously, he knows what he's talking about - you will read excellent books if you do), but he's just an all around awesome guy.

Of course I jumped at the chance to see Ryan back in the blogging world as he closed shop on his own blog not too long ago and I was and am truly grateful for his offer.

Months pass, I just figured he was busy, I could understand at the time I was working full time, studying for the bar, and managing to see my family (three kids three and under!) every free minute.

Well, it turns out he did respond and write up a great post (which you'll see below), only with all the filters I use on the blog for giveaways and such, it went through to a random folder that I didn't see until just last week. Doh.

Yeah, I'm an idiot. Without any more idiocy, here's that post that Ryan so excellently and beneficently prepared...
______________________________

Hi everybody! Bryce has been brave kind enough to
loan me his blog for a bit while he is out doing important adult things like
taking the bar exam, working a job, and raising kids. Sheesh! Sounds like a lot of work! I suppose
introductions of some sort are in order… My name is Ryan, some of you may or
may not know me, (the latter is more likely), I once ran a little known, (aka
“underground”) fantasy, sf, comics, metal music blog called Battle Hymns. I hung up the blogging pants about a year ago,
but when I read that OTBSFF would be semi-inactive due to a life-nado event I
figured I’d offer up my services. I dangled the vaguest of guest post ideas,
Bryce took the bait and here I am!

Here’s what I have to offer: a quick post filled with
mini-reviews of books I read in 2013 that, for better or worse, have lived long
in the memory.

The Red Knight: At
the height of my blogging prowess I was receiving free books here and there,
and The Red Knight was one of those that I was really pumped to get my paws on.
It was one of those books that didn’t sit long on the reading pile. Overall I
was pretty pleased with this book. It is pretty damn action packed and the
titular character is a pretty interesting guy, and some secrets lie buried
beneath his surface that I was intent on uncovering as the story played out.

The plot here is kinda standard; siege situation where the
good guys are severely outnumbered and outgunned. (Out-sworded?). But, there is a giant-ass tree-wizard, some
sweet beasties and monsters and the
most realistic battle, arms, armor and life-of-a-medieval-warrior depictions
I’ve read since Mary Gentle’s Ash. This one scratched a lot of my itches so I’m
looking forward to the next installment.

Demon Squad Vol. 5
Beyond the Veil: Ahh, Demon Squad. How do I love thee? Let me count the
ways:exactly like mine. Two, you
mix in a sweet blend of brutal gun slinging action with magic, mayhem and bad
ass demons, angels, aliens and more. Three, there’s a whole bunch of metal
references strewn about the text, which I really appreciate. Four, you get
better with each installment. Five…okay, I’ll stop there, you catch my drift.

One, You have a principle character whose moral fiber is slightly (okay,
totally) questionable and whose brain seemingly functions

Like Bryce, I’m a big Demon Squad fan. In this installment
Frank finds himself doing some inter-dimensional travel all in an attempt to
save his lady. All the while, in typical Frank fashion, he’s been dealt a
terrible hand: drafted into the service of the Almighty, and forced to work
with his lady’s dad. Sound shitty? Well, that’s just how Frank Trigg rolls. As
per usual, this book is loaded with all the goods I drooled over earlier.

Marquitz has honed his skills with each installment in this series and at this
point a new Demon Squad book is a sure-fire hit for me. If you haven’t given
this series a go, do it. It is highly entertaining stuff.

The Ryiria
Revelations Series: Back in the day when this was just a little known indie
series, I read the first installment, then it got picked up by Orbit and the
six book series got turned into three hefty omnibuses. I picked up the new editions, re-read the
first piece and the next thing I knew I had read the whole damn series.

Let me just be frank, this is a very good fantasy series. And you know what else? It is complete,
so you don’t have to wait eons for the next book to come out.

The Ryiria Revelations is a fantasy buddy hero epic ala
Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser and Paul S. Kemp’s Egil and Nix
stuff. The two main characters Royce and Hadrian are extremely likable and
Sullivan does a great job of making each and every installment of the series
stand alone with a legitimate ending.
That being said, each of the six installments tie into this greater
tapestry that he’s crafted. It is a
really nice touch and one I really appreciated.
This series manages to be lots of fun, offers a strong plot, interesting
characters and plenty of excitement. I
highly recommend this, especially if you want to get away from the grimdark
side of the fantasy genre.

The Lies of Locke
Lamora: Before you start thinking: “Where has this guy been? The Lies of
Locke Lamora came out years ago!” Let me explain. I read this book way back in
the day (’08) like all the other cool kids who are up on the fantasy game. The
thing is, I wasn’t a huge fan. I even went as far as selling my copy to a used
book store. Then, some blogger dude who is keen on posting ebook deals at his
blog, (I’m looking at you Bryce!) mentioned something about this book being on
sale for .99 cents. I figured I’d give it another shot and you know what?
AMAZING!

All I could do while reading this book (aside from enjoying
each and every page) was look back at my 2008 self with hate. I don’t know what the hell ailed me back
then. This is simply a fantastic fantasy book.

Lynch’s prose is strong, his
plotting is deft, his characters are enchanting, and it is all set in an
extremely well-imagined world. The whole book builds to this amazing crescendo
that Lynch pulls of masterfully.

This is an A+ fantasy novel for me and I’m keen to delve
further into the series.

On Basilisk Station:
Late in the year last year I found myself with a strange urge to read some
military SF. After waffling back and forth between Weber’s Honor Harrington
series and Bujold’s Mile Vorkosigan series, I finally settled on the Weber
stuff ‘cause the ebook was free on Amazon.

Well, I was sorely disappointed. This book proved to be very
thin on character development and thick on the techno-porn.

Yuck. (don’t hate me for my opinion if you are an Honorverse
fan!)

I thought I’d enjoy immersing myself in some interstellar
space battles, and I did (sorta) but I didn’t find anything else to enjoy.
Well, that’s not totally true, kudos to Weber for crafting a female lead who is
strong, smart, and bad-ass in a not clichéd way. I just wish there was more surrounding her to
make the series worth my time.

And last but certainly not least… my non-genre must-read
recommendation:

Americanah by
Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche: This was the first book I read in 2014 and I can
already tell it

is going to be nearly impossible to top. Adiche is flat out a phenomenal writer. Her
prose is incredibly captivating, her characters are extremely real and this
book deals with modern real-world issues in an extremely frank, honest and open
way…its often pretty funny too.

At the heart of this novel is a love story between the two
primary characters Ifemelu and Obinze. These two meet in high school and fall
in love but go their separate ways for college because the military
dictatorship in their native Nigeria is driving folks abroad. The story takes
place over a span of about 15 and will resonate strongly with readers who are
navigating the tricky waters of their 20’s and early 30’s. This is a story
about the many social, political, and racial conundrums in our society, but is
also about much, much more. This is a fascinating and provocative read and one
that is truly worth the read.

17 March, 2014

The Tales of the Ketty Jay have been on my list for a while, I even own the first book, Retribution Falls, but the US publication of later releases has been uncertain at best in the last couple years. Last year, Titan Publishing picked up the rest of the series after it was dropped by Bantam Spectra and book three, The Iron Jackal, just came out last week.

This series is a steampunk mash-up that has been getting great reviews since it's first publication in 2009. For the uninitiated, the following is the Goodreads blurb for Retribution Falls:

Sky piracy is a bit out of Darian Frey’s league. Fate has not been kind
to the captain of the airship Ketty Jay—or his motley crew. They are all
running from something. Crake is a daemonist in hiding, traveling with an
armored golem and burdened by guilt. Jez is the new navigator, desperate to
keep her secret from the rest of the crew. Malvery is a disgraced doctor,
drinking himself to death. So when an opportunity arises to steal a chest of
gems from a vulnerable airship, Frey can’t pass it up. It’s an easy take—and
the payoff will finally make him a rich man.

But when the attack
goes horribly wrong, Frey suddenly finds himself the most wanted man in Vardia,
trailed by bounty hunters, the elite Century Knights, and the dread queen of
the skies, Trinica Dracken. Frey realizes that they’ve been set up to take a
fall but doesn’t know the endgame. And the ultimate answer for captain and crew
may lie in the legendary hidden pirate town of Retribution Falls. That’s if
they can get there without getting blown out of the sky.

Because I've been terrible at posting lately and because we had some family emergencies last week, involving me calling 911 for my 19-month-old who was having febrile seizures, I neglected to post the following excerpt.

Tales of the Ketty Jay:
1) Retribution Falls
2) The Black Lung Captain
3) The Iron Jackal
4) The Ace of Skulls (Available in the UK)

From The Iron Jackal:
________________________________

Three

Sightseeing
– The Duchess and the Daisy-Chain – Ghosts at Her Shoulder – Floodlights – A
Deception

The Ketty
Jay groaned and shrieked as she lifted off her struts and began to rise
above the landing pad. She was a solid, brutish thing with a humped back,
short, downswept wings and a stumpy tail end: a hybrid cargo hauler and combat
craft, built tough at the expense of beauty. With her belly lights shining, she
ascended into the sultry night, her ballast tanks filling with ultralight
aerium gas.

Crake watched from
the cockpit as the landing pad fell away beneath them. The aircraft on the
ground were all Vard or Yort in design: this was a pad reserved for foreigners.
Samarlan Navy craft glided through the sky, blade-sleek predators underlit by
the city glow.

Let’s hope we don’t have to tangle with any of them tonight, he thought.

Jez was in the
pilot’s seat. The Cap’n sat at the navigator’s station, bruised and battered
and looking generally dejected. Crake knew how much he hated letting anyone
else fly his beloved aircraft.

It had been a few
days since Frey’s introduction to Ashua’s boot, but his face had healed up quickly,
although it was still a little lumpy and faintly discoloured. According to
Malvery, the rest of him hadn’t done so well. His back and ribs were a mass of
yellow and purple from the fall he took. He winced whenever he moved.

Harkins hung by
the door, pilot’s cap scrunched up in nervous hands, his hangdog face animated
by some internal distress. No doubt he was feeling lost without his Firecrow.
The two fighter craft that normally travelled with the Ketty Jay had been left on the landing pad tonight.

Pinn and Harkins
had taken some persuading to leave their craft in Shasiith. Pinn entertained
the strange belief that he could fly by instinct alone; Harkins was terrified
of being separated from his aircraft. The Cap’n had finally convinced them both
by making them walk around blindfold and counting how many things they bumped
into. Then he reminded them what would happen if they did that at three hundred
kloms an hour. They would be travelling over unfamiliar terrain without lights,
on a moonless night, in near total darkness. The only member of their crew who
could fly like that was Jez, due to her inhumanly sharp vision.

Ashua was here
too, leaning against a bulkhead with her arms crossed, keeping an eye on
things. Crake found the young woman distasteful. She had a surly arrogance that
bothered him. Someone from such an obviously poor background shouldn’t carry
themselves with that kind of aggressive confidence. It offended his sense of
the order of things.

The question was
addressed to Jez. He must have been plucking up his courage for several minutes
before he dared speak to her. Crake felt rather sorry for Harkins. It was hard
to watch him trying to get her attention. Everyone on board knew that he was
sweet on Jez, except, apparently, Jez herself.

‘There’s not much
aerium around since the embargo,’ Jez replied, to Harkins’ evident delight.
‘What there is is reserved for the Navy. Everyone else uses road or rail.’

‘That’s the whole
reason they opened the Free Trade Zone in the first place,’ Ashua said. ‘To
make it easy to smuggle aerium in from Vardia.’ She eyed the Navy craft in the
distance. ‘But once you get outside the Zone, they’ll take you down hard.’

‘Unless they don’t
see us,’ said Frey. ‘Which is pretty much the plan.’

‘Yeah,’ said Jez.
‘We really don’t want to be messing with the Sammie Navy if we can help it.’

Crake walked over
to stand behind Jez, in the pilot’s seat, as the Ketty Jay ascended and the city spread out beneath them. This was
what he’d come to the cockpit to see. Darkness had swallowed the faraway
mountains, the plains of yellow grass and the distant herds of unfamiliar
animals that he remembered from the day they arrived. Shasiith was a cauldron
of light below them, its muddled streets like shining veins. Sun-scorched domes
and parapets cooled in the night, darkening to shadow as they rose. Buildings
of breathtaking scale and complexity crowded together along the black line of
the river. Dozens of bridges spanned the flow. There were buildings on the
bridges with lights in their windows, a necklace of dirty stars reaching from
one bank to another.

‘Isn’t that
something?’ he said, a smile touching the corner of his lips.

Jez murmured in
agreement. He knew she’d get it. She was the only other member of the crew who
had any appreciation for art and culture. While the rest had been propping up
bars and fleecing the locals in gambling dens, Jez and Crake had been taking in
the sights, visiting monuments, tasting delicacies and generally soaking in the
atmosphere of Samarla. Jez was a guarded and closed-off sort, but she
understood beauty and wonder.

Once he’d drunk in
enough of the view, Crake headed out of the cockpit and into the passage that
ran along the spine of the Ketty Jay.
After a short way, a ladder ran up one side of the passage to a seat in the
autocannon cupola on the Ketty Jay’s
back. He stopped to look up, saw the bottom of Malvery’s boots, and heard a
glugging sound.

‘Settled in
already, Doc?’

Malvery’s grinning
face appeared, looking down between his legs. ‘Cap’n wants me on the watch for
any Sammies once we’re out of the Free Trade Zone,’ he said. He brandished a
bottle of grog. ‘Reckoned I might as well bring a friend, make a night of it.’

‘See anything?’

‘Got a fine view
of the Ketty Jay’s arse end. I’d
invite you up for a drink, but it’s pretty cosy in here.’

‘That’s alright.
I’m going to see Bess.’

‘Give her my
regards.’

‘Will do.’

His quarters were
half a dozen metres down the corridor, behind a sliding metal door that
squealed on its rollers as he pulled it aside. The room beyond was cramped and
bare, comprising a pair of small bunk-beds, a basin, a chest and a cupboard. It
was as clean and tidy as he could make it, but it was still little more than a
metal box to sleep in. Since he had these quarters to himself, he’d laid a
board across the upper bunk and used it as a bookshelf and luggage rack. He
picked a heavy, leather-bound book from the row of several dozen, tucked it
under his arm, and went down into the cargo hold.

The belly of the Ketty Jay was cavernous in comparison to
the upper deck. He was making his way down the steps when he heard a growing
roar, and felt the gentle and insistent push of the Ketty Jay’s thrusters. He held on to a railing and listened as the
lashed-down cargo creaked and shifted in the gloom.

The Rattletraps
were secured side-by-side in the centre of the hold. The name was a local
Vardic word to describe a Samarlan vehicle that most foreigners found hard to
pronounce. Crake thought it perfectly suitable to describe the three armoured
sand-buggies that Ashua had rustled up. They were grimy contraptions that
looked like they hailed from some distant and uncivilised frontier. They had
large, dusty tyres and sat on thickly coiled springs for suspension. Two of
them had rotary gatling guns mounted on top of their roll-cages.

He eyed them
uncertainly. Ashua would be driving one. Jez had volunteered to drive another.
There wasn’t much that Jez couldn’t drive or fly, when it came to it.
Apparently, she’d had experience with similar vehicles while working for
Professor Malstrom, back before she was caught by a Mane.

Silo would be
taking the third Rattletrap. No one knew what
he had experience in. His past was unknown to Crake, except that he’d rescued
Frey from certain death after Frey had crash-landed in Samarla many years ago.
Crake had always supposed there was a story to it but, as far as he knew, no
one had asked and Silo wasn’t telling.

Crake, for his
part, had always wondered where a Murthian slave learned to speak Vardic so
well. He hardly ever spoke to anyone on the crew, so it seemed unlikely that
he’d learned it on the Ketty Jay.
Curiously, his phrasing and regional burr came from Draki, the southernmost
duchy of Vardia, which bordered onto Samarla. Draki was traditionally regarded
as a cultural and literal wasteland, populated by rural people from peasant
stock who eked a living from the hard earth, half of it poisoned by the
Blackendraft blowing in from the Hookhollow volcanoes to the west. How Silo
could have learned Vardic from Draki folk was a mystery.

Well, whatever the
truth, Silo was confident he could drive a Rattletrap better than anyone else
here. And if Silo said so, then it was true.

He made his way to
the back of the hold, where a small area was separated off by a wall of crates
and a tarpaulin curtain. Beyond was his makeshift sanctum. It was
disappointingly bare, little more than a private area for him to work because
his own quarters were too cramped. There was a desk and a chalkboard, a
cupboard full of apparatus and equipment and space for a small summoning
circle, but that was all. Barely adequate for even a fledgeling daemonist.

For the past few
months he’d been increasingly frustrated in his attempts to expand his
knowledge of the Art. Frey had given him the space and let him do whatever he
wanted – mostly because he didn’t understand what Crake was doing – but the
simple fact was that he needed a proper sanctum and you couldn’t have one on
board an aircraft. Anything fragile would eventually break when it was shaken
about in flight. His delicately calibrated machines never stayed calibrated for
long. The electricity supply wasn’t robust enough to risk calling up anything
dangerous, since the resonator might fail and let it out. He would drain the Ketty Jay’s batteries if he used them
while she was grounded, and he’d never dare attempt a summoning while they were
in the air.

I need a place to work, he told himself.
A home, with a sanctum. Or I’ll never get
any better.

But that would
mean stepping off the Ketty Jay for
good. And there might still be bounty hunters looking for him. He’d seen
neither hide nor hair of the Shacklemores for a long while now, but it was
dangerous to assume they’d given up.

Bess, who was
standing dormant in a shadowy corner, roused herself as he approached and came
lumbering over. She was a golem of tarnished metal and chainmail, standing
eight feet high and five broad. Her face – if indeed she had a face – was set low between enormous shoulders and hidden
behind a circular grille. Only two twinkling stars were visible where her eyes
might have been, twin glimmers in the abyss.

She hunkered down
in front of Crake so he could give her an awkward hug, and bubbled happily in
the depths of her chest cavity.

‘How are you
tonight, Bess? Happy to see me?’

She rocked back
and forth. Since she had no neck, it was the closest she got to a nod.

‘Good girl,’ he
said, rubbing his hand over her hump. ‘Good girl.’

He found it was
easiest to treat her like a pet, though he wasn’t exactly sure what she was.
Was there still something in there of the eight-year-old she’d once been?
Perhaps. But he’d come to terms with the death of his niece as best he could.
He’d come to terms with his part in it, too, although that had been much
harder. The remorse and regret would never truly end. This golem carried some
memory of that beautiful child, but it wasn’t her inside that armoured suit.
The real Bess was dead. What was left was an echo of her, an imprint.

But that was
something.

‘Look what I
brought you,’ he said, holding up the book. The title was printed on the red
leather cover: Stories for Little Girls.
Bess couldn’t read, but after a moment she recognised the book. She clapped her
hands with a loud crash of metal, tottered backwards on her stumpy legs and
plonked herself onto the ground.

Crake sat down
cross-legged next to her. She loomed over his shoulder as he opened the book,
craning in eagerly to see the colourful illustrations.

‘Which one shall
we read tonight?’ he asked.

Bess made a
quizzical noise: an eerie, otherworldly coo. She sensed a question, but she
didn’t understand what he’d said. He was never quite sure how much she
comprehended of speech. She seemed to have good days and bad days. Or perhaps
she was just good at guessing his intentions rather than interpreting the
actual words.

‘I’ll pick, shall
I?’ he said, turning to one that he knew was her favourite.

She hunkered
closer, her face-grille pressed close to the page. Maybe it was the pictures
she enjoyed, or maybe she just liked to hear him talk, even if she didn’t know
what he was saying. It didn’t matter. While she kept listening, he’d keep
reading. He’d brought her into the world, and he had responsibilities. An
honourable man had to live up to his responsibilities.

‘The Duchess and
the Daisy-Chain,’ he announced, and he began.

((###))

The desert was a cold and empty place at
night. Sand and stone, from horizon to horizon. Barren outcrops jutted out of
the steel-grey dunes like rotten teeth. It was a new moon, only visible as a
round absence in the swathes of stars overhead. Their frosty shine, coming from
an impossible distance, was barely enough for human eyes to see by.

For Jez, piloting
the Ketty Jay, it wasn’t a problem.
The night was as clear to her as the day.

They were a long
way outside the Free Trade Zone, deeply into illegal airspace. She flew with
the lights out and thrusters running quiet. With only the sky as a background,
the Ketty Jay was a speck hurtling
through an infinity of black. Only her thrusters gave her away, their blazing
glow alien to the chill dark. But there was nothing to be done about that,
except hope that nobody was sharp enough to spot them.

Jez had dropped
into a shallow trance as they flew. Her uncanny vision was something she didn’t
have to think about, but it was only when she was in a trance that the full
range of her Mane senses kicked in. Then she could sense the wind, calculate
it, as if its turbulence was something visible and easy to predict. She was
aware of Ashua’s heartbeat, fast and nervous, betraying her outwardly confident
exterior. She could hear the workings of the aircraft, purring with health
since it had been overhauled at Trinica’s expense. It had been a thank-you for
saving the pirate captain from the Manes, the very creatures that had given Jez
these gifts. They lurked on the edge of her consciousness these days, no longer
calling to her as they used to, quiet presences like ghosts at her shoulder.

She was a
half-Mane. Once that knowledge had tormented her, but now she was beginning to
settle into the idea. She no longer feared the ones who had made her what she
was.

Something tugged
at the edge of her senses. A disturbance in the desert winds. She frowned, and
tracked its source.

‘Malvery!’ she
called through the doorway. ‘Five o’clock high! You see anything?’

The Ketty Jay was too bulky for the pilot to
see behind the aircraft, which was why they often had a lookout in the cupola.
After a few seconds, Malvery called back. ‘I see it. Sammie frigate. Bit of a
way off.’

‘They coming
towards us?’

Another pause.
‘Reckon so. Reckon they’re coming at quite a clip, as well.’

‘Might be we’re
just going across their flight path,’ said Ashua from the shadows at the back
of the cockpit. ‘They might not have seen us.’

‘Change course,’
said Frey quickly, from the navigator’s station. Jez did so, turning the Ketty Jay to a new heading that would
force the Samarlans to correct if they wanted to intercept. Minutes ticked by,
counted by restless tapping of Harkins’ boot as he tried to contain the
explosive hysteria building up inside him. When she judged that enough time had
passed, she called again.

‘Doc?’

‘Still coming.’

Jez swore under
her breath. ‘They’ve seen the thruster glow.’

‘At that
distance?’ Frey said. ‘There’s no way they—’

He was interrupted
by a flash and a deafening concussion.

The Ketty Jay rang like a struck bell and
slewed to port, sending Ashua and Harkins sprawling to the floor and almost
knocking Frey out of his seat. Jez wrestled with the flight stick and brought
the Ketty Jay back to an even keel.

A small frigate,
then, if it was only carrying four fighters. But the odds were hopeless even
so.

‘Better make
ourselves scarce,’ said Jez. She hit the thrusters and the Ketty Jay roared as she surged forward.

‘Let me fly,’ said
Frey anxiously, getting up from his seat. ‘I can—’

‘Greatest respect,
Cap’n, but sit yourself down,’ she said with a casual firmness that stopped him
in his tracks. ‘You’d be blind out there. And you can’t fly where I’m going.’

‘Where’s thaaaAAAA—’ Frey’s question turned to a
yell as Jez dumped aerium from the tanks and pushed the Ketty Jay’s nose down, sending her into a steep plunge towards the
ground.

‘Dropping to the
deck, Cap’n,’ she said. ‘Let’s see if they dare follow us.’

‘Without lights?’
Ashua cried. ‘Are you insane? You can’t fly that low to the ground when you
can’t see it.’

Jez spared a
moment to look over her shoulder. ‘I’ve got good eyes,’ she said.

Powerful flood
beams swung across the landscape as the approaching frigate and its fighters
tried to get a light on them. Harkins let out an involuntary yelp as he saw how
close they were to the rocky desert floor.

By going low to
the ground, she forced the Samarlans to make a choice. They could either plunge
down and match her altitude – a dangerous option in the dark – or they could
make shallow dives while firing and then pull up. That meant they couldn’t get
on the Ketty Jay’s tail, and made her
much harder to hit.

‘Fighters coming
in!’ called Malvery.

‘Deep or shallow?’
Jez called back.

‘You what?’

‘The angle. Deep
or… Never mind,’ she said. The cockpit was suddenly illuminated from outside as
the beams found them. The fighters were rigged for night-flying, with banks of
floodlights along their wings. She could estimate their angle of approach by
the slant of the light as it shone past the Ketty
Jay and cast her shadow on the ground. The fighters had chosen the
lowest-risk strategy. Even with lights, flying close to the ground on a
moonless night was too dangerous for their tastes. They didn’t have the
advantages that Jez did.

She trimmed the
aerium ballast and levelled out just above ground level, close enough to make
Frey give a little squeak in the back of his throat. The desert floor rushed by
beneath them. Jez banked hard and swung away from the light as she heard the
rattle of machine guns from behind. Tracer fire flitted past the Ketty Jay, chewing up the earth below.

‘Malvery!’ shouted
Frey. ‘What are you waiting for?’

‘Orders?’ Malvery
suggested.

‘Well, consider yourself
bloody ordered. Shoot them!’

‘Right-o,’ said
the doctor, and opened up with the autocannon.

Another explosion
pounded the Ketty Jay, but Jez had
sensed the shell whipping through the air and pulled away just in time to avoid
being swatted into the ground.

‘How in the name
of rotting bastardy are they scoring on us at that range?’ Frey demanded.

‘Lucky shot,’ said
Jez. ‘Next one’s going way wide.’

As if to
illustrate her point, a bloom of fire lit up the night some distance to
starboard. She kept up an evasive pattern. The fighters couldn’t draw a bead on
her. She could tell when they were lining up on the Ketty Jay by the angle of their light beams, and then she would
dodge. They swooped, missed, and looped back into the air to try again. They
were slender, needle-nosed things, streamlined like flattened darts. Built to
look good, like all Samarlan craft.

‘Can’t keep this
up for ever, Cap’n. We need to lose them fast.’

Frey got out of
his seat and peered through the windglass of the cockpit. The play of the
fighter’s lights were showing glimpses of the terrain ahead. A colossal outcrop
reared out of the ground a few kloms ahead.

Suddenly his face
lit up. ‘There,’ he said, pointing.

‘I don’t get it.’

‘They’re following
the glow from our prothane thrusters, right?’ he said. ‘Well, this aircraft
doesn’t only run on prothane.’ She grinned as she caught on. ‘I’d buckle in if
I were you, Cap’n.’

‘Move it!’ Frey
snapped. The shock broke Harkins’ paralysis, and he scampered out of the
cockpit and up the corridor, calling the alarm. Frey threw himself into the
navigator’s chair and secured the straps. Ashua slipped her arm through a gap
in the bulkhead and braced herself.

The lights from
the fighters behind them slipped and swung all around them. Tracer fire chased
them through the night. The outcrop loomed ahead, blacking out the background
as Jez took them on a course that would skim close to its flank. Another
explosion tore through the air. The frigate was getting nearer, and its
shelling would become more accurate as it did.

Frey was a bag of
nerves by now. Jez could hear it in his heartbeat and smell it on his sweat.
‘Malvery!’ he yelled. ‘Will you get those
fighters off our tail?’

‘If you think it’s
so easy, come up here and do it yourself!’ Malvery yelled back. He fired
another burst, a dull thump-thump-thump
of artillery, then guffawed triumphantly. ‘There you go! Happy now?’

One of the
Samarlan fighters went screaming overhead, close enough to make Jez duck in
fright. It corkscrewed through the air, trailing flames from the stump of a
wing, and smashed into the side of the outcrop in a smoky cough of fire.

‘Here we go,’ Jez
shouted over the roar of the engine and the sound of distant machine guns.
‘Malvery, quit firing when I say!’

‘I just got bloody
started!’ he cried indignantly.

Jez ignored him.
‘Everyone hang on to something! Malvery, now!’

The autocannon
fell silent. The outcrop was to starboard now, mere metres off their wing-tip.
She took it as close as she dared, knowing her pursuers wouldn’t match her.
They pulled away, intending to catch her on the far side. But instead of flying
past it, she banked hard to starboard, swinging around the back of the outcrop.
The Ketty Jay’s thrusters screamed as
she powered through the air. Her frame shook with the stress. Jez heard a
string of bumps and crashes from the depths of the aircraft, as everything that
wasn’t secured went sliding and clattering across the floor. Malvery began
spluttering a string of frightened curses as the aircraft tipped to almost ninety
degrees, bringing him face-to-face with the sides of the outcrop, only a dome
of windglass between him and a thundering wall of rock.

And then the
lights disappeared. The outcrop stood between the Ketty Jay and her pursuers, and for a few seconds they flew in
utter darkness.

Jez did an
emergency kill on the thrusters and boosted the aerium engines to maximum,
pulling the Ketty Jay’s nose up as
she did. The aerium engines hummed as electromagnets pulverised liquid aerium
into gas, filling the ballast tanks, making the Ketty Jay lighter than air. Jez rode the momentum that they already
had and took the Ketty Jay up into
the night, her thrusters now dark, invisible against the background of the sky.

Nobody saw them
go.

As the Ketty Jay became lighter, the air
resistance slowed them down. Jez airbraked until they were stationary and then
let them rise like a balloon, straight up into the atmosphere. The frigate
glided past like a shark to starboard, dwindling beneath them, its floods
trained on the outcrop where its quarry had disappeared. The fighters swooped
and banked, searching for the telltale glow of thrusters. But they were all
looking in the wrong place.

When they’d gone
high enough, Jez vented aerium to equalise the weight and the Ketty Jay stopped rising. The Samarlans
were still looking fruitlessly for them, a klom below. Jez slumped back in her
seat, then turned around and grinned.

‘That was a good
idea, Cap’n.’

‘I’m impressed,
anyway,’ said Ashua, rubbing her arm where it had been bruised by the bulkhead.

Frey unbuckled
himself, rolling his shoulder, and reached over to give Jez a pat on the
shoulder. ‘Don’t know what I’d do without you.’

Jez retied her
ponytail to disguise the flush of pleasure she felt at that. Sometimes, she
decided, being half-daemon was not so bad at all.

14 March, 2014

I get lots of submissions to post about Kickstarter projects and I try to not post too many because, well, this isn't one of the plenty of Kickstarter/pledge-backed-projects blogs. I guess I invite them by posts such as these, but sometimes I can't help it.

Used with permission.

This would be one of those times apparently. After checking out the page, which you can do here, or some of the pictures in this post, I'm sure you'll be as blown away as I was. (Click to embiggen)

"They called it the Reset, the great apocalypse that nearly destroyed all of civilization. In the blink of an eye nuclear fire laid waste to the planet, and those that survived were buried in ash."

Used with permission.

Probably my favorite, a glimpse of the underground city:

Used with permission.

Whether you can donate or not, check out the rest of the pics and the story sounds pretty cool too.

12 March, 2014

Miles Cameron has been on my radar since last year's The Red Knight, his debut fantasy novel, came out and I'm happy to present his guest post to you today. The Fell Sword, book two in the Traitor Son Cycle hit stores yesterday and some of the early reviews are just as glowing.

According to Goodreads, Cameron is an "author, a re-enactor, an outdoors expert and a weapons specialist" and many of those skills are on display as he stars in the recent Orbit Books video, Epic Questions Answered. Here, he proves that a dastardly epic fantasy book, no matter the pagecount, is no match for a ghiavarina. And don't worry, they don't presume you know what kind of weapon that is, I know I didn't.

Today, we bring you an article on Cameron's military career and its impact on his writing. Without further ado...

________________________

The Military and Historical Fantasy

Perhaps the question I’m most frequently asked is how my writing was and is impacted by my first career as an officer in the United States Navy. I suspect the impacts are more profound than I can recount, but it’s worth a try to list them, and it is a great question.

First, the modern military gave me an entirely new perspective on ‘history’ and its reality and our perceptions of it. I had the chance on a number of occasions to be at the center of a CNN or BBC story, so to speak—I can remember sitting in the ready room of my squadron and watching CNN tell me (incorrectly) where I was and what I was doing in the first Gulf War; I can remember watching a CBC special with my girlfriend (now wife) about the war in Somalia that was so bad I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry; I learned that mass conspiracies involving assassinations and cover-ups aren’t possible (at least in western democracies) and that history isn’t even written by the victors—it’s written by the media arms of the victors who often don’t understand what just happened.

The military did not teach me to write, but they did teach me to write very, very quickly, and to do so for a long time. Anyone who has written military reports should be nodding along by now. The military taught me a great deal about leadership, and how men and women function in a crisis—and how some men and fewer women seek to create crisis because it is the only kind of situation in which they function; how a good leader may snap orders in a real crisis but can be surprisingly consensual in day-to-day situations.

I learned that almost everything I’d ever read about combat was either inadequate or an out and out lie—because most of us don’t have a conscious ‘track’ through terror, but simply react with whatever training we have to survive. Most of us. I also learned that an essential element of war is humour—something has to take the edge off—and some of that humour is very dark indeed-too dark, really, for the ‘real’ world. In Africa I learned that the world in which we live in the West is delicate—the rule of law, the triumph of technology, even liberty--all are delicate. Not to be taken for granted.

I learned that it is the team that triumphs, not the individual, in almost any war situation; and that the best fed, best rested, best led team almost always wins, regardless of muscles or technology. Muscles and technology can help you be well-rested and well-fed and confident, but they can’t win the day by themselves. And I guess I learned that almost everyone is brave. Human beings are scary predators, not easy victims.

These are the perceptions I took away from the military—they help with everything from dialogue to experiential detail. And—did I mention loving the sea? I have been out in the North Atlantic in a storm. And everywhere else—the sea is the ultimate Wild.

______________________

Thanks to Miles Cameron and Orbit. If your interest has been piqued, Orbit has posted a sample of The Red Knight, book one of the Traitor Son Cycle.

06 March, 2014

Well, it's over. The bar exam has come and gone and I'm back to work full time. It's still a bit of a transition time, but I wanted to start getting back to the blog. And what a better way to start than with a giveaway?

Pyr's been good to me the last few weeks. I just got a couple finished versions of books I already received the ARC for, so yet another time I get to ask, why not?

I like having multiple winners because it gives more people a chance to win. This seems obvious, but instead of doing two separate giveaways for these books, having two winners means that there can't be the same winner for both books. It could happen, just saying.

Which brings me to my point, this giveaway will go like this: the first person's name who is drawn will get the first choice and then the second person gets what's left over, the poor soul. Does that work for you?

If you'd like a chance to win one of these two titles, just follow the exceedingly simple instructions below:

E-mail me your name and address at onlythebestsff@[removethis]gmail.com, with "Blood and Pyr-on" as the subject of the email (or at least something that lets me know what the email is about). This goes without saying, but double emails get you disqualified.Snarky comments increase your chances of winning and win bonus entries for future giveaways. I'm happy to say this is open WORLDWIDE as long as delivery doesn't require the mounting of an expedition into remote wilderness.